Alan Caruba's blog is a daily look at events, personalities, and issues from an independent point of view. Copyright, Alan Caruba, 2015. With attribution, posts may be shared. A permission request is welcome. Email acaruba@aol.com.

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Don't be an April 'Earth Month' Fool

By Alan
Caruba

The annual
calendar is filled with days and months designated for the
purpose of calling attention to some event, personality, or cause. The U.S. celebrates
the birthdays of Lincoln and Washington that fall close together. There’s
Mother’s and Father’s Day, Labor Day and Veteran’s Day, Valentine’s,
Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Easter and Christmas.

But who
decided that April was “Earth Month” or that April 22 is “Earth Day”?

Why are we
expected to worship the planet that was here billions of years before we showed
up and will likely be here long after we manage to destroy ourselves with
cataclysmic wars. And it is worship
that is at the heart of these two events. That alone should tell you how
essentially pagan they are.

This Earth
Month will celebrate its 45th anniversary, having begun in 1970 and,
not surprisingly, its theme is “Our planet in peril.” Our planet is not in
peril. It’s been around for 4.5 billion years and short of a rogue asteroid or
our getting sucked into a black hole, the planet will be around several
billions of years more. The galaxy in which we live is relatively predictable
and stable, so the notion that the Earth is in peril borders on idiocy.

Well,
idiocy, if you think that it is in peril from us, the human species. This is at the core of the environmental
mindset. It appears that merely using the Earth as a place to live is reason
enough to hold us responsible for everything that naturally occurs to it.

Environmentalists
do not like the human race and will not hesitate to tell you there are too many
of us. They do what they can to reduce the population through disease by, for
example, banning DDT and any other chemicals that protect us from insect and
rodent pests that are major vectors for the transmission of disease.

According
to the 2015 Earth Month Network, Inc. announcement “There are literally
hundreds of problems and issues plaguing our global environment, i.e., climate
change, global warming and their effects; and the continuation of polluting our
delicate ecosystem just to mention a few.”

Which is
it? Climate change or global warming? There hasn’t been any dramatic global
warming in the past 19 years during which the planet has been in a natural
cooling cycle, along with the Sun which we depend upon to warm us. So anyone
claiming the Earth is warming is blowing smoke up your skirt.

As for
climate change, that has always been occurring. Short term it’s called the four
seasons. Long term it takes the form of ice ages, major glaciations that have
occurred every 140 million years, and other eras such as the Great Permian
Extinction, the largest in Earth’s history that wiped out an estimated 95% of
every kind of life-form on Earth. It was one of four mass extinctions over the
course of the 3.5 billion years that life has existed on Earth. Remember the
mammoths? They died a mere 11,500 years ago.

Last year,
the Earth Month theme was “Returning to Nature.” Do you really want to return to
nature? No electricity. No shelter other than a nice cave. No food except for
the animals or fish you would have to catch for dinner. No vegetables or fruits
except those you could find wherever you lived. That’s right, no supermarkets!
And, if you want to go anywhere, you will have to walk.

Yes, nature sounds
wonderful and, in its own way, is wonderful, but the human species has devoted
a great deal of time to finding ways to survive it.

I was
reminded that April was Earth Month when I received an email from the Saybrook
Point Inn & Spa which said this Connecticut site was “excited to offer a
special package to honor Earth Day.” It is “a Certified Green Hotel” and you
will be treated to a “unique Ecotourism Getaway” that provides an
“environmentally friendly stay without sacrificing comfort.” Why would you want
to pay them for their special package if it didn’t include comfort and lots of
it? Mostly what Saybrook Point wants is your money, just like any other
perfectly ordinary inn and spa that isn’t “certified.”

One can be confident that we are going to be regaled with all manner of
“environmental” messages and events throughout April, all of which have the
same theme: the Earth is in danger from YOU!

Do
yourself a favor. Ignore them. Get in your car and go where you want. Go to the
supermarket and don’t worry about the plastic packaging or the plastic bags.
Set the temperature in your home or apartment to a level of comfort that you
like. It’s your life and you pay good money to benefit from all the
conveniences of modern life.

Let’s
appreciate the Earth, not worship it.

Environmentalism
is one of the great scams of the modern era. Its emphasis on “renewable energy”
has been a huge, expensive failure. Its claims of disappearing forests are
bogus and its demands for the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will
only harm all vegetation everywhere. The Earth needs CO2 in the same way you
and all other living creatures need oxygen.

Let’s
celebrate mankind’s mastery of the Earth in the form of agriculture, ranching,
sophisticated shelters from the log cabin to the skyscraper, the channeling of
rivers to produce energy and the technology that provides clean water for us.
And, yes, manufacturing. You can’t even imagine what the world was like before
the discovery of coal, oil, and natural gas.

About Me

I am and have been for a long time a writer by profession. I have several books to my credit and my daily column, "Warning Signs", is disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites, as well as blogs. In addition, I am a longtime book reviewer and have a blog offering a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction.